Rejoining Fethullah Gülen in "Emigration"
After staying for two days in Chicago, the Windy City, which can be considered to be the center of the United States, we found ourselves in Houston, Texas, in the south. We moved from the chilly cold of Lake Michigan to the upper part of the Gulf of Mexico, to tropical humidity and heat.
We listened to speeches given by world-famous scholars of divinity, Sufism and philosophy, and Islamologists from the US, Australia, the UK, Canada, and other countries on the "Fethullah Gülen Movement" (and on Fethullah Gülen as a person and the unique experience of the schools that have spread all over the world), and we participated in the discussions. Though we had traveled the vast geography of the US, we spent most of our time indoors.
Now, we are in a different part of the US; in the Northeast. We are experiencing the beautiful fall days. In the fall, these parts of the US are particularly beautiful. It is a two or two and half hour flight to New York from here and one and half to Philadelphia. We are in a forest camp in Pennsylvania. Fethullah Gülen is here. We are with Fethullah Gülen.
In the central building, in the middle of a 25-acre field that contains 10 buildings we are able to finally reunite. We dine together. When I say that we "reunite," I mean that we have come together after many years. According to my calculations, I last met Fethullah Gülen in 1998. Hard to believe, but seven and a half years have passed since then.
He seemed, to my eyes, unchanged. He is apparently in good health; I told him so. Yet, traces of ruthless exhaustion and the wear and tear of the past 7 or 7 ½ years must have taken their toll on all of us. As far as I am concerned, when I look at the photos that I took 7 years ago, I can see the difference these years have imposed on me. We know that Fethullah Hodja, or as we called him, "Hodjaefendi," has been wrestling with health problems over these past years, and that this beautiful part of the US has been nothing more than a place of ordeal for him.
I did not tell him that I was extremely happy to meet Fethullah Gülen after such a long time. I kept it inside. Now, I am expressing it through this article. What has kept us from seeing each other were the events of February 28. The character-assassination campaign that had been launched against him, the dubious "provocation cassettes" which were suddenly circulated via the media-all of these had forced Gülen to leave his native land.
I was incredibly happy to meet him after such a long time. Also if felt as if we had shouted "Stop the process of February 28" at the top of our voices...
Following dinner, we went to the upstairs hall, where we talked as we drank tea. Just like the good old days. Just like we did from time to time when we were in Turkey.
When I retreated to my room in one of the buildings in this 25-acre wooded field at a late hour and opened my laptop to write this article, I felt that the process of February 28, which some claimed would "last for 1,000 years", had passed by with "the speed of light" and was now very distant. "Those days of veiled. Days in which we could not meet Fethullah Gülen. Days which forced Fethullah Gülen fascism"... to leave Turkey, with his blood pressure rising to dangerous levels. Days in which our current Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan was sent to prison.
Tayyip Erdoğan has been able to move from the prison to the Prime Minister's Residence in Ankara; it was high time to meet with Fethullah Gülen in Pennsylvania, and be received by him as guests. Yet, on the other hand, it is saddening fact that the conditions in Turkey are not those in which Fethullah Gülen can live, and that he still lives in this foreign land far away from home. This also implies that we have not fully ridden out the storm of February 28.
This still applies, even if the prisoner of February 28 is the Prime Minister. For instance, I, as one of those cursed by February 28, am aware of the fact that my credit has not been duly reestablished. And, the emigration after February 28" has not yet ended; it is still in existence in Pennsylvania.
Considering all this, my meeting with Fethullah Gülen seemed to be very dramatic to me...
Although he lives in a 25-acre forest camp in the US, he has spent all these years in a small room in the central building. In a sense, it is has been a prison for him, a place of suffering. He derives his power from his being a practitioner of Sufism.
Fethullah Hodja is an extraordinarily simple and plain person. Yet, at the same time, he has an extraordinarily complex inner world. After all the talk in Chicago and Houston, when you meet him in person in a place in Pennsylvania, you are better able to understand why many authorities around the world feel the need to conduct a great deal of in-depth research about him.
As a reminder, this simple, plain, timid man is the source of inspiration for 700 schools that have spread all over the world from St. Petersburg to the Yemen, from Japan to Indonesia, from Macedonia to Australia; these are the laurels of Turkey and the Muslim identity, as well as thousands of the "unknown soldiers" who support them. Fethullah Gülen is the most influential and most esteemed of Turkish values all over the world...
Bugün
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